


Four days and counting

by eternaluniverse



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Dark, F/M, Friendship, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, inspired by the promo picture, the doctor in prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaluniverse/pseuds/eternaluniverse
Summary: The Doctor is in prison, cut off from the outside world and any chance of social interactions. Only one problem – she isn't alone.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Four days and counting

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote nearly all of this immediately after the promo pictures were released but thought the story didn’t flow enough and drifted off too much into darkness.   
> I still think it’s dark, but when I read it again, I kind of thought the flow fits the story.   
> So here it is – far too late, but anyway… I hope you enjoy!

It’s been four days now. Four days and the Doctor is convinced she is losing her mind.

She doesn’t have a voice left. She spent the whole last day screaming for help until the person in the cell next to her was hoarse from laughing, too.

The Doctor wonders who they could possibly be, in a prison built for Time Lords.

Her prison jumper itches and what would she give for her usual clothes.

“Don’t worry, love. Red suits you.”

The Doctor doesn’t even take the effort to turn around, he can’t be here. He is _dead_.

(Or that’s what she hopes for. What she fears for. What should never be allowed to be real.)

  


Seven days. That’s a human week. How did she manage to stay put for this long?

Maybe she miscounted? That’s new too. Counting. To keep track of the time. Is that how humans feel?

Because of the timelock surrounding the already time-bubbled prison, the Doctor lost the ability to feel the passing of time.

It’s torture to her. Quite literally.

The Master laughs at her behind her back and the Doctor refuses to turn around. He isn’t there.

  


Day eleven, and the Doctor annoys the guard long enough to receive a few scraps of chalk. That’s all she needs.

With no humans the Doctor stops caring about trying to show more human. Her tally marks have 10 lines, for each day of the equivalence of a gallifreyan week. It’s a punch in the gut, every single time. Because there are only two people left in the universe who even know that.

“It wasn’t me, you know.” Whispers a voice in her ear. The Doctor flinches. She still remembers the voice of Harold Saxon, times when the Master though being the Prime Minister was fun.

“You did it first. Burnt them all.” He continues.

The Doctor sinks to the floor, clutching her head and screaming in frustration. She can still hear the Master laugh.

  


When the Doctor wakes up to make her 76th tally mark, the Master, still wearing his purple coat as if nothing had happened, sits in front of her bed and grins at her.

The Doctor jumps, stumbling backwards, still staring at him.

“You _can’t_ be here!” She hisses but the Master only gives her a pitiful look.

“You are dead!”

The Master smiles. It looks nearly comforting. “I don’t need to be alive to be real.”

The Doctor storms to the door and hammers at it, with one eye still watching the Master who decides to stretch on her bed as if he owns the room.

The guard that finally approaches gives her an annoyed look. “What?” He growls.

“Please, I don’t want to share my cell with him!”

The Master laughs and the guard stares at her as if she lost her mind.

She probably has.

“Please!” The Doctor begs again, she can’t have _him_ remind her of all the horrors.

But the guard rolls his eyes and leaves. It takes the Doctor nearly two hours before she realises, that she had been speaking Gallifreyan, and no TARDIS in reach to translate her babbling.

  


Somehow, they get a routine after a while. A human year passes, and the Doctor still remembers to always make a mark on the wall.

The Master is unusual quiet. Most of the times he just stares at her, sometimes angry, sometimes pitiful. He also has his times, when he whispers words like “Timeless child” and “Gallifrey”, when she finally manages to forget him for a moment.

He possesses her bed and after an argument with the Master, the Doctor just decided to sleep on the floor.

She _knows_ he can’t be here. Alive or not. He can’t! She tried to punch him once, after he started provoking her again, only to hit the wall.

The pain helped to ground her.

“You’re a hallucination!” She whispers every day so that she doesn’t forget it herself.

The Master only laughs. “But I’m still real. In here.” And the Doctor swears she can feel his fingers on her forehead.

After that the Doctor just accept him.

  


On day 1590 a third person joins her in the cell.

The Doctor wakes up to stare into clear blue eyes. It is then that she is at least sure, that she is hallucinating.

She lays on the floor and watches the boy in the prydonian academy uniform tap a well to known rhythm on the floor.

The Doctor observes his little face and hears the Master laugh behind her back. “Nothing to be ashamed of to miss _him._ ”

The Doctor sits up slowly, the same moment Koschei returns a look. Different to his future self who chuckles darkly behind her back, he smiles at her.

“Hello Theta.”

  


They all come. Day 2702 and the little cell is far too stuffed with the Doctor and multiple Masters.

Missy spends a whole day laughing at her, for how stupid she had been to believe her. To _trust the Master._ Somehow that hurts more than the unapproving headshake of the Master who first introduced himself with this name.

He’s still too much like Koschei and truly her friend.

He knows that and makes sure she never forgets how _she_ ruined that that precious little piece of their friendship that hadn’t shattered yet.

Even the regeneration of her friend, who is barely alive comes to their little party, looking at her out of eyes that don’t have any lids and his look is still so _dismissively_.

“You should have seen it coming, don’t you, Doctor.” The Master in his stolen body addresses her, side by side with his self that was meant to die by the Dalek execution.

 _“You could have saved me_.” He grins at her, yellow eyes wide with joy, while they all start talking to her at once. She can’t bear it.

“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” The Doctor screams and tries to push the nearest Master away. Of course, she only hits Koschei who falls down and starts bleeding badly.

“No, no, no!” She cries, begs the guards for help and tries to find a way to stop the bleeding. But the child just goes limp in her arm and the Master with his ruined skin sits next to her and looks at Koschei with pity in his eyes.

“You’ve saved him from so much pain and suffering. Don’t be sad.”

But the Doctor isn’t sad. She’s desperate and ready to kill anyone who threatens to take away her best friend.

But he is already gone.

She wipes the blood from Koschei’s face and strokes his hair, apologising until her voice is gone again.

Eventually she realises, that it is her own blood, dripping from her cracked hand. The wall is speckled with red too. The Doctor doesn’t have any energy left to think about it.

When she falls asleep her dreams are full of an unknown, horrible pasts, with no Master she could hold on to. The multiple faces look at her and laugh. Somehow the Doctor hopes they have been happier than she has.

She doubts it. How could a life without her best friend be worth living?

When she wakes up Koschei is back, casually chatting with the oldest Master. His other incarnations are gone but the grin of her friend shows her, that this won’t save her.

  


It only stays the three of them after this incident. _Day 5209_.   
Or so she thinks. It’s hard keeping track of the time without her time sense and too many tally marks.

The child in the cell irritates the Doctor. And shouldn’t it be wrong to lock a child up? Even if this child is going to be the Master someday.

Oh, of course, now she is empathising with a genocidal mass-murderer. Great.

  


“You could escape.” The Master states one day.

He doesn’t say anything else. It’s not necessary. Both of them know, that it’s only her own guilt that keeps her caged – in her head as well as in this tiny room.

The Doctor starts pitying humans, after all those days she can’t see all the curiosity in them, she only sees the terrible routine that follows their lives.

She gets reminded of that every time a guard brings her food. At the same time. Every day.

If she wouldn’t be mad already, this regularity would have ruined her sanity. But she doesn’t think she had ever been sane in the first place.

Koschei frowns due to her thoughts, as always tapping the hated rhythm of the drums. If he goes on like that, the Doctor is sure to hear the sound for the rest of her live, too.

“Only fair.” The Master mumbles but doesn’t sound too convinced. She’s grateful for this tiny sign of sympathy.

Koschei only continues tapping, but the Doctor can’t bring herself to snap at the child. He’s the only one who’s even remotely kind to her for years now.

  


The Doctor rubs her face, confused, just for a second. Even after all this time she has her days when she wakes up, wondering why she hadn’t grown a beard by now.

“Oh Theta, you fool.”

The Master laughs and the Doctor thinks she has these thoughts deliberately to see him laughing. She laughs with him, giggling in actual joy after such a long time.

“It’s a pity, don’t you think? We would match!”

The Master laughs even more, before he answers her. “Yeah, but your beards always looked rubbish.”

The Doctor actually has a nice day, talking with the Master about the time she tried to grow a beard. From there on they start talking about their time at the Academy.

It nearly feels as if her best friend isn’t just a product of her traumatised mind.

  


“Koschei?” The Doctor mumbles on day 6004.

But it’s the Master who sits next to her.

“Yes, love?”

“Can you hug me, please.”

First, she thinks he will laugh at her. And he does. He laughs until he has tears in his eyes. But eventually he reaches his arms for her and the Doctor let herself get pulled in his embrace. She can feel the cold stones of the wall, but when she closes her eyes, the dead man in her head becomes almost real.

  


Sometime after that she starts to enjoy the presence of the two people her mind produces. She even allows herself to stop keeping track of the time. It’s useless.

She doesn’t count, but still every morning one tally mark. All the walls a painted by now and she starts with the floor. She loathes herself for keeping up such a useless rhythm, a rhythm so similar to the ones she despises the humans for.

“Favourite race in the universe?” The Master grins but Koschei already shushes his future self, asking the Doctor to tell him the story of the Toclafane.

Instead, she starts talking about a year the never was, but the young boy is delighted anyway.

  


Eventually even Koschei leaves.

The Doctor’s finger scratch over the floor, retracing the tally marks there. It feels like losing her best friend again.

“I’m still there.” The Master whispers but that day the Doctor cries anyway.

She misses the useless hallucinating of the one person that ever truly loved her. Why can’t _he_ stay. Why can’t even her mind make it right for once.

“But I’m still there!” The Master protests this time. “Look, Theta, look.”

But the Doctor doesn’t look.

And it doesn’t matter. He’s dead anyway.

  


The Master is huffy for the next eight tally marks. Eight _days_ , she tries to remind herself, but the concept is floating away from her. It’s dark all the time. No reason to talk about days.

“How can I know you, Doctor, if I haven’t met all your regenerations?” The Master asks with a mocking tone. But the Doctor laughs at this accusation because she hasn’t met all his regenerations either.

He sighs and the Doctor realises, that he’s only trying to cheer her up.

In the end they both laugh. Or rather, the Doctor laughs at a wall, full of tally marks. But she’s used to it now and it’s easy to talk herself into believing her dead friend is very much alive and sitting right in front of her.

  


“I know you’re alive.” She whispered at the Master when his presence starts to look ghostlike before her eyes. He looks up at her, something sad in his eyes.

“Or so you hope.”

The Doctor hisses at him.

“No, I _know_ it. You never die!”

The Master only laughs, and the Doctor starts doubting.

  


But in the end, her doubts don’t matter. The Master is there for her anyway.

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” She begs one day, in fear of losing him like Koschei. And all his other selves.

The Master sighs.

“It’s never me who _leaves_. That’s always you.”

Of course, he’s right, but it doesn’t sting that hard anymore.

“Not this time!” The Doctor promises but her friend only shrugs. No wonder, she thinks bitterly, he knows her so much better than she had ever known herself.

  


On the day the Doctor starts climbing up her bed to reach the ceiling for the tally marks, Captain Jack Harkness looks through the hatch. He grins. The Doctor just stares back.

“Doctor, I need your help.” And he keeps talking about Daleks and Yasmin and for sure he means her fam – She doesn’t even know why she’s laughing until her body collapses. The Master stares at her from her bed.

„What are you waiting for, Theta?”

The Doctor fights back to her feet, looks at Jack’s confusing emotion and grins. She doesn’t even know if he’s real.

But she comes with Jack anyway, looking back at the cell where the Master still sits on the bed, nodding approvingly.

But he’s right, as always, after all, she’s leaving him again.

**Author's Note:**

> I would probably have written a few parts differently with the trailer in mind, but I hope you enjoyed anyway! 
> 
> Btw, if you’re wondering about the Doctor thoughts when she starts her tally marks “[…] there are only two people left in the universe who even know that.” are intentionally, even though the Doctor spends the whole story convincing herself, that the Master is dead. 
> 
> As always, I would love to hear your thoughts :)


End file.
